Quiet Power: Conscious Breathing

What if the fastest way to slow down is already with you—every moment of your life? We take a clear, practical look at conscious breathing as a simple tool for radical relaxation, steadier attention, and the first real steps of a spiritual life. Without jargon or heavy theory, we unpack why most of us breathe automatically yet rarely feel it, and how shifting to breath awareness can calm the nervous system, ease anxiety, and open a sense of presence you can trust.

We begin with a quick recap of the holy pause and move into the core idea: let the breathing breathe itself. You’ll be guided through two short practices designed for busy people. First, basic breath awareness that often relaxes the body in under thirty seconds. Then, belly breathing with a hand on the abdomen to encourage diaphragmatic movement and deeper calm. Along the way, we highlight psychological and spiritual benefits—equanimity, focus, gentle joy—and touch on the wider impact of making silence and inner focus normal at school, work, and home.

These are practices you can repeat anywhere: before a meeting, after tough news, or as a daily reset. We share personal insights from years of teaching and practicing, plus simple ways to integrate breath into your routine without force or fuss. If you’ve wanted a grounded way to start or deepen your inner life, this is a friendly map you can put to use immediately.

Press play, breathe with us, and see what shifts. If the practices help, share the episode with a friend, subscribe for future guides, and leave a review so more people can find this work.

Chapters

• 0:06 Welcome And Recap: Holy Pause
• 0:43 Why Conscious Breathing Matters
• 2:30 Health And Spiritual Benefits
• 3:20 Practice One: Follow The Breath
• 5:16 Core Principles And Options
• 6:18 Practice Two: Belly Breathing
• 8:11 Integrating Practice Daily
• 9:05 Schools, Culture, And Silence
• 9:52 Closing Reflections And Thanks

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:06

Hello everyone, welcome to the episode four of the Spirit X podcast. I'm excited to be with you here today. So in the previous episode, we started discussing the ways we start our spiritual life or inner life or meaningful life, etc. And we agreed that slowing down with our body, mind, and the world is very important. I hold I call that in my book a holy pause. And we kind of learn how to slow down in a very, very, very busy and fast world. And today I would like to continue along those lines. And I want to introduce something that you are all familiar with to an extent or in practice, and it's the practice of mindful breeding or conscious breeding. Breeding is definitely essential for spiritual life and for life in general. I think in general, what is lacking in Western culture and in global culture is that people learn how to breed and relax that way. So the story about mindful breeding, conscious breeding, spiritual breeding goes like this. So we know that breeding is our biological necessity. We cannot live without food, we cannot live without water, and we cannot live without breeding. Our life starts with first breath, our life ends with the last breath, and in the meantime, we breed all the time, when we are awake and when we sleep, when we are happy, when we are unhappy, etc. But we are not aware that we are breeding. So if somebody asks a regular people, are you breeding? they're going to say, Of course I'm breeding. I mean, you know, I'm I'm alive, that means I'm breeding. But if you ask people, are you conscious of the process of breeding? 99% of people are going to say no. So what we do in spirituality, and what I think we should do more in life, is to make the process of breeding conscious. So that's where where and when the magic starts happening with conscious breathing and with our body, mind, and spirit. So conscious breathing, mindful breeding, as opposed to what might be called automatic breeding. The benefits of breeding are I would say breeding is good for conscious breeding is good for our well-being and for our medical condition, but it has also psychological and spiritual benefits too. So some well-being medical benefits would be it's good to relax the nervous system, it's good to improve immune system, it's great against depression, anxiety, etc. The psychological and spiritual benefits are uh equanimity, relaxation, focus, concentration, deeper bliss and joy and presence. So it's a long list of both kinds of benefits. The key with conscious breeding is not to talk about it but to do it. So I would like to offer you actually two practices today. Uh just try it with me. Try on your own. Uh trust the the this whole body of knowledge behind conscious breeding. If it feels a little bit weird, that's fine at the beginning. But once you relax so into it, once you do it a few times with me, once you do it a few times with yourself, it's actually a very, very, very enjoyable process. So here is the first practice that I want to offer you. So we are going to bring our attention to the process of breeding. So I'm inviting you to slowly move your attention from me to your process of breeding. So notice there is an inbread and outbread. So our attention is on breathing. And I'm inviting you only to follow breathing. So let the breathing breed itself. Don't change it, don't manipulate it, just gently with your attention, follow breathing. Inbred, outbread, inbred, outbread. Our attention is on breathing. Notice how after 30 seconds you actually relaxed radically, and that's the first benefit of conscious breathing. It's a radical profound relaxation. And we stop our practice here. Thanks for practicing with me. So the core of conscious breathing is a very simple gesture is paying your attention to the process of breathing, letting breathing breathe itself, and let the that whole process and practice and techniques actually relax radically your body and mind. So that's the uh first suggestion for today. There is one more. I just want to say before we jump on the next practice, there is thousands of breathing practices across transitions in psychology, in medicine, very, very beneficial. You find what works for you, you start with the basics, they're very sophisticated breeding techniques. I personally benefited tremendously from breeding techniques. I do almost spontaneously now conscious breathing, I do it daily. Uh, I have no words to describe benefits in my life. I started maybe 30 years ago doing that, and my life radically transformed with breathing and other practices too. So here is the second practice. So we are going to do belly breathing or deep breathing. Why? Uh so in uh spirituality, we wanna make that process deeper. So the vast majority of people breathe into their lungs, and that's okay. But we are going to go a step deeper and we are going to breathe into our belly. And if you want to make the whole process a little bit physical and tactile, so I invite you to put your right hand into the belly and to follow your belly into the belly and out. So let's do a few belly breaths. So into the belly and out, into the belly and out, into the belly and out. Again, we are not manipulating anything, we're just following the breath, and by doing so, we're deeply relaxing. And I also invite you to for this exercise to close your eyes. I'm going to close my eyes and I'm going to do deep breathing into the belly now, t into the belly and out, tick, into the belly and out, tick, into the belly and out, and one more time into the belly and out. And we gently open our eyes. Thanks for doing this practice with me. Uh, as I said, there are so many breathing techniques. There are those that I offer you just two glimpses throughout this podcast. We'll definitely do more. I do it more in my live events and online events. The key is to do it with other people. You can do it with me in groups, but the key is also to do it on your own. Conscious breathing is extraordinary rewarding practice. Rewarding means you don't do it much and benefits are huge. So breathing is definitely one of those practices. And this gesture that we just did in the second exercise, when we close our eyes and focus on breath, that that's an absolutely magical gesture, and that's a real, real, real beginning of spiritual life. So you close your eyes, you connect with your inner life, and you focus on breath, and that's that's the ultimate magic of the beginning of the spiritual life. So uh that's the gesture that is lacking. Culturally, as some of you know that I have a uh nonprofit organization called Spirit Without Boundaries. And when we go to schools, middle schools and high schools and do this kind of stuff, a lot of teachers and students and administrators are sharing with us what that's what was missing is the educational process, that silence and that inner focus and inner relaxation in the classroom is really, really magical. So I concluded that's what's missing in our global culture too. So again, uh with mindful breeding, you can do it individually, you can do it in groups. I hope more schools and and workplaces and organizations are going to offer it, and I think that's happening. But in the meantime, the best saving race for you is actually to do it on your own or to do it with me. That's all for this episode. I thank you for your attention, and I will see you in the next episode. Thank you very much.